Hospital where ceiling fell on life-support patient to spend cash to hit net zero

An NHS hospital where a ceiling fell on a patient in critical condition is using taxpayer funding to try to become the first net zero trust in the UK.

The intensive care unit at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, in Harlow, Essex, remained closed on Monday after its ceiling caved in on the patient, who was receiving life support, last Wednesday. The trust said no one was harmed.

The hospital has received a share of the £20 billion in funding from the Government’s New Hospital Programme and will use the cash to make its new site “fully electric and completely carbon neutral” by 2030.

The radical plans for the new site include creating a “sky farm” on its roof to grow the food that hospital inpatients will eat during their stays.

But the green initiatives, which will not come into place until the next decade at the earliest, have done little to assuage patient safety fears at the crumbling hospital’s current site.

Critics have said the hospital had “its heads in the clouds focusing on utopian goals rather than keeping a roof over their heads”.

£500m rebuild

The Princess Alexandra is due to be rebuilt at a cost likely to be in excess of £500 million because of its failing infrastructure. It opened in the 1960s.

It confirmed last week that it had declared a major incident after medical equipment fell from fittings on the ceiling, with the Sunday Times reporting that debris hit a person on life-support.

Patients at the hospital have also endured an average of around 100 “clinical service incidents” a week over the past five years, which are where issues with the building have had an impact on or delayed care.

There were also 40 major sewage leaks in 2022, according to Freedom of Information requests by the Liberal Democrats.

The Government has provided £4.2 billion in funding to upgrade facilities this year and £1.7 billion for improvements at 70 hospitals.

Hospitals are legally responsible for maintaining their estates.

‘Requires improvement’

The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust currently “requires improvement” according to the regulator, the Care Quality Commission.

It has drawn up plans for its new hospital to be “green from the roof down”, run entirely on electricity, with environmentally friendly transport links and producing  no carbon dioxide at all. It says the amount of CO2 it currently produces every year is equivalent to that from 1,436 return flights from London to New York.

Jonathan Eida, researcher for the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers are sick of the NHS prioritising the future rather than the present.

“Health bosses have their heads in the clouds focusing on utopian goals rather than keeping a roof over their heads,” he added. “The Trust needs to focus on delivering frontline services.”

The hospital was also accused of wasting taxpayer money last month, after FOIs obtained by local news outlet Your Harlow revealed it had sent executives on a £60,000 Las Vegas trip last September.

It said the trip had been approved as part of a business case to assess and learn how to use its new electronic patient record system, called Alex Health, which itself cost £31 million.

During the trip hospital leaders stayed in the prestigious New York New York Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas strip, which is home to its own rollercoaster and a replica of the Statue of Liberty.

Sean Phillips, head of health and social care at Policy Exchange, a think tank, said “dreadful incidents” such as the ceiling collapse “will become more commonplace unless progress with the ‘high-risk’ maintenance backlog and New Hospital Programme overall can be accelerated”.

He added: “Where Harlow residents had expected new facilities by 2025, they will now likely have to wait until 2030. Further delay should not be acceptable.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We have invested significant sums to upgrade and modernise NHS buildings so staff have the facilities needed to provide world-class care for patients, including £4.2 billion this financial year.

“This is on top of the expected investment of over £20 billion for the New Hospital Programme, which includes a commitment to delivering a new hospital at Princess Alexandra in Harlow.

“Funding allocated towards net zero targets or electronic patient records does not affect the funding for maintenance of hospital estates.”

The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust was asked for a comment.